how many pubs in ireland
Ireland currently has on the order of 6,500–7,800 pubs, depending on how you define and count them, and the number has been falling over the past two decades.
Quick Scoop
- From 2005 to 2024, the number of licensed pubs in Ireland dropped from 8,617 to about 6,498, a fall of just over one quarter.
- For the 2022–2023 licence year, there were about 7,856 pub licences issued or renewed, a broader count that reflects all active licences rather than only pubs still trading.
- Industry research that groups “pubs and nightclubs” together reports around 6,600 active businesses in that combined sector in 2025, which is consistent with a core pub count in the mid‑6,000s.
Why the numbers differ
The answer to “how many pubs in Ireland?” depends on:
- What you count
- Only traditional pubs with a publican’s licence.
- Or all alcohol on‑trade licences (including some hotels, late bars, nightclubs).
- Which year you pick
- Around 2005, the total was above 8,600 pubs.
* By 2017, that had already fallen to roughly 7,140.
* By 2024, research for the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland put it at about 6,498.
So a reasonable present‑day shorthand answer is: roughly six and a half thousand pubs , with a longer‑term decline continuing.
Mini timeline of pub numbers (Republic of Ireland)
| Year | Approx. number of pubs | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 8,617 | Public houses before major decline began. | [3][7]
| 2017 | 7,140 | Documented in national statistics series. | [7]
| 2022–23 (licence year) | 7,856 licences | Count of pub licences issued/renewed. | [1]
| 2024 | 6,498 | Estimate of licensed pubs still operating. | [3]
| 2025 (pubs + nightclubs) | 6,605 businesses | Industry category combining pubs and nightclubs. | [5]
A quick story‑style view
If you imagine Ireland in 2005, there were enough pubs that almost every village had one or more local spots and the national count was above 8,600. Over the next twenty years, pressures like changing drinking habits, higher costs, and tighter regulation slowly pushed many small rural pubs to close, so that by the mid‑2020s roughly one in four had disappeared. Even so, Ireland still ranks among the countries with the highest pub density in the world, and in some rural counties you can still find a pub for every few hundred people.
In other words: there are still thousands of pubs , but noticeably fewer than a generation ago.
TL;DR: If you’re looking for a single headline figure for “how many pubs in Ireland” right now, a solid, data‑based estimate is around 6,500 licensed pubs currently trading , down from over 8,600 in 2005.
Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.